Archive for Sep 28, 2011

T-Mobile confirmed via a tweet today that it will indeed be carrying the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. Earlier this month, we were clued that the tablet would be heading to the carrier when a 10-inch Samsung tablet showed up at the FCC sporting T-Mobile's AWS bands. Now that's confirmed, but we'll have to wait for the details, which the carrier has promised to reveal in the coming weeks.

Intel launched its own app store for netbooks in January of 2010 and although interest in the marketplace appeared to be growing with major content additions, consumer signups for the platform remain low. According to a tweet from @LeilaMakki, Intel admits that it hasn't registered many consumers to the platform. In fact, only about 350,000 have signed up.

Amazon's Kindle event today brought not one but four new models, along with some quiet rebranding and even a new browser. Heady stuff, then, and plenty to get your head around, especially if all you want to do is some casual reading. We've pulled together all of this morning's Amazon news to get you up to speed, so click on for the the ereader goodness.

The entry-level Amazon Kindle has price going for it, especially if you don't mind adverts, with a $79 sticker for the WiFi-only ereader. On the flip side, without the touchscreen of its more expensive Kindle Touch siblings, and missing the QWERTY keyboard of its predecessors, it's possible Amazon has slimmed things down a little too much. Read on for our first impressions.

Amazon's shift from keyboards to touch isn't quite wholescale, but fingers are definitely the way forward for the new Kindle range. We've just grabbed some hands-on time with the Amazon Kindle Touch and Touch 3G at the retailer's launch event today, and there's a lot to like about how compact the ereaders have become now that they've shed the physical 'boards.

Amazon has quietly pushed its Special Offers across the new Kindle range, with prices quoted by CEO Jeff Bezos for all the new models taking into account the ad-supported discounting. Without Special Offers, pricing on the entry-level Kindle Touch jumps by $40, in fact. However, the focus on Special Offers has inadvertently led to frustration, as international customers find pricing for versions of the new Kindles outside the US is considerably higher than Bezos suggested.

Amazon has made the Kindle Fire official, and we've just grabbed some up-close time with the new touchscreen tablet at the retailer's launch event. Already up for pre-order and shipping November 15, the Kindle Fire is based on Android but hides its roots well, with Amazon more interested in pushing its multimedia credentials, super-fast surfing the with new Silk browser, and ereading of course. Check out more hands-on details after the cut.

Amazon will continue to sell the existing Kindle, complete with its physical keyboard, as the Amazon Kindle Keyboard. Although the retailer has announced new touchscreen Kindles, as well as an entry-level model at $79, there's still an option for those who want to enter text without pecking at the touchscreen or shifting a cursor around an on-screen board with a D-pad.

Amazon has launched its own browser, Amazon Silk, designed to offer an accelerated internet experience on the Amazon Kindle Fire. Split between the Kindle Fire itself and Amazon's own EC2 servers, Silk promises accelerated browsing using a combination of caching, compressing and other technologies, funneling the latest stored version of common files straight to your device.

I remember back when I was a kid my dad always parked his car in the garage and I was always the one that had to get out and open the door rain or shine. Thankfully we all have garage door openers today. The thing that bothers me is every now and again my garage door opener decides to randomly not close when I push the clicker.

Of all the factory built street legal racing cars in the world, the Dodge Viper SRT10 ACR is one of the most capable. The car packs in a race ready chassis and aerodynamics along with a massive 600HP V10 engine under the hood. There were no 2011 model year Viper cars so when the car geeks from the Chrysler Group SRT team, Viper Club of America, and ViperExchange by Tomball Dodge teamed up to grab the production car lap record at the famed 12.9-mile Nurburgring Nordschleife track in Germany, records fell.

Amazon has launched the Kindle Touch, a touchscreen-based ereader that uses an infra-red finger-tracking system for navigation. Smaller than the existing Kindle, the Kindle Touch uses a new control UI, with the bulk of the right hand side of the display used to move forward through the book, and a strip on the left to move back. Meanwhile, there's a 3G version too, the Kindle Touch 3G.